The Mike Bloomberg era ended decisively in New York City on Tuesday night, withBill de Blasio cruising to victory in the Democratic primary against better-known rivals who did not promise the clean break with the last 12 years that de Blasio did.
According to early exit polls, de Blasio won across the board, equaling or besting his opponents among black voters, female voters, gay voters, voters who wanted a change, and even voters who approved of the way Bloomberg governed Gotham over the last 12 years.
“There are those who have said that our vision for this city is too big, that we are asking of wealthy New Yorkers too much,” de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, told a raucous crowd of supporters at the Bell House, a music venue in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. “That we have set our sights for our children too high, that we are guilty—guilty, my friends—of thinking too big. But let me say this: We are New Yorkers. Proud citizens of the greatest city on earth. Thinking big isn’t new to us. It is the very foundation of who we are.”
Just after midnight, de Blasio was hovering near the 40 percent threshold necessary to avoid a runoff in three weeks. Bill Thompson, his closest rival, garnered just 26 percent of the vote but vowed to fight on. The winner of a runoff will face Joe Lhota, the former chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Agency and a former aide to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who easily won the Republican nomination.
The de Blasio election night celebration illustrated just how different his candidacy was. Instead of gathering at a major Midtown hotel to watch the returns, as New York City mayoral campaigns traditionally do, hundreds of supporters turned Gowanus, an industrial neighborhood not far from the candidate’s home in Park Slope, into a political street party with outdoor grilling, music-making, free-flowing beer, and supporters glued to television screens. Inside the Bell House, where the indie pop duo Ted Leo and Aimee Mann were slated to play the next night, de Blasio supporters cheered as returns showed a victory looking ever more likely.
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